Do schools have to provide online lessons?

[christmascake246]

One of my DD is at a school that has never provided online lessons and has already stated they will not be doing so for January even though they have said school start will be delayed for some years. They just set work to do on SMH and plan to continue doing the same, not even any pre recorded lessons. This did not work well in last lockdown or through all last terms isolations. Is there a minimum requirement/expectations for online learning? I felt like DD got a very poor deal in first lockdown compared to many other schools. At the moment DD is meant to be back at school next week as is in year 11 but obviously that may not happen. Thanks

My understanding is no. One of the main reasons is that not all students have access to technology to access these types of lessons, these students tend to be from poor families and many school quite rightly want to provide a level playing field

Show my homework is work set online is it not?

Schools don’t have to set live lessons if that is what you’re referring to, as they would be a nightmare for siblings sharing a laptop.

This is the guidance -

www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools#res

They don't have to offer full live lessons, but should, amongst other things -

"In developing their remote education, we expect schools to:

use a curriculum sequence that allows access to high-quality online and offline resources and teaching videos and that is linked to the school’s curriculum expectations

select the online tools that will be consistently used across the school in order to allow interaction, assessment and feedback and make sure staff are trained in their use

provide printed resources, such as textbooks and workbooks, for pupils who do not have suitable online access

publish information for pupils, parents and carers about their remote education provision on their website by 25 January 2021 – an optional template is available to support schools with this expectation

set work that is of equivalent length to the core teaching pupils would receive in school, and as a minimum:
primary: 3 hours a day, on average, across the school cohort
secondary: 4 hours a day, with more for pupils working towards formal qualifications this year

provide frequent, clear explanations of new content, delivered by a teacher or through high-quality curriculum resources or videos"

schoolsweek.co.uk/coronavirus-schools-have-legal-duty-to-provide-remote-education/

@Fedup21

Show my homework is work set online is it not?

Schools don’t have to set live lessons if that is what you’re referring to, as they would be a nightmare for siblings sharing a laptop.

Yes, but wouldn’t use much data/time from a mobile phone to access. A live lesson requires enough stable internet and individual devices for all school age children in a house to access at once and while a parent is quite possibly trying to work online as well. It requires enough rooms for each child to work independently without disruption from other live lessons being taught to siblings. A recorded lesson is better in that several children could access lessons at different times from one device, using less internet capacity. Stuff online which is an instruction for independent work is easiest of all to manage. Of course, it also probably less effective than accessing live or recorded lessons (research says there’s not a lot of difference between those two, apparently) but it’s better than not being able to access anything.

Lots of parents don’t want live lessons due to the logistics of having more than one child needing to access them at the same time and not enough devices/stable enough wifi.

There is also no evidence that they offer any better standard of education than recorded lessons/other resources.

Not online lessons but they do need to provide an education.

This did not work well in last lockdown or through all last terms isolations
You mean, this did not work well for you during the last lockdown. As pp has explained, this will have been better for some families than a "live lesson".

Yes of course I meant it did not work well for DD as I said it didnt work for all her isolations last term either. I am sure some children had good experience of lockdown and did not need to isolate at all last term. Others were off for 6 weeks last term. My experience only refers to DD.

However for subjects like maths and science it seems like an explanation would be helpful whether online teaching or a pre recorded lesson for some topics. DD has had very little since March as had many cover teachers when in school too and 2 weeks of mocks but nothing fed back yet.

I am just trying to understand what would be reasonable to expect and if worksheets are adequate if they dont go back to school until Feb half term for example. She has never had a recorded lesson let alone an online lesson so has very little explained since March and is year 11.

The Education Endowment Trust have deduced that live lessons are not the best way to deliver remote learning. The most important factor is feedback and dialogue regarding a students work. Whether that is done through e mail/Teams etc will be up to the school.

The government funded an online school of recoded lessons and resources.

www.thenational.academy/

So there is a requirement that there should be feedback as we had nothing between March and Sept and nothing during isolations since Sept. I really dont care what method is used I just want DD to not be at too much of a disadvantage as there were obviously schools that did give feedback/do teaching/explanations. If schools dont go back she wont even have have had feedback on mocks and just a couple of lessons in school with her actual teachers since March!!

Patriciaholm -
"provide frequent, clear explanations of new content, delivered by a teacher or through high-quality curriculum resources or videos" - would a work sheet cover this for maths/science or should it be an explanation/link to utube video or something.

I wouldn't think just sending worksheets would be adequate. The requirement only came in in October I believe. I really feel for the older kids going through this.

noble - Thanks for the link to oak academy - some of my younger kids have been using it. How would that work for yr 11 GCSE. It doesnt seem to be by exam board or higher/lower tier (except maths). Is it triple science? Cant see anything for English language. DD is targeted 8s but predicted 9s in some so would it be at appropriate level?? I presume now in yr 11 the key thing is feedback on technique, exams questions, mocks as most topics will have been covered even if self taught.

Op must dd school, also did no on line teaching and I'm not sure what the excuse was.
We are in a fairly wealthy area, the school cohort is definitely on the wealthier side. No audit was done as to what tech each student had... So I'm not sure why they didn't do anything. All around us, other places smoothly went on line and carried on getting our young people educated?

I've just seen an interview on sky, head teacher of Tollworth girls school said they went on line very successfully, and any students who had issues with getting on line simply went into the school.

She made it sound so easy. So many schools have made it so easy and others, so hard.

Feedback was not a requirement until the end of October. The curriculum was suspended in spring and it was a real hotch potch. My school feedback at least once a week, my DS didnt even get his GCSE paper marked!

Op I would be writing stiff emails as to what provision there will be and why on earth are they not providing it.

You've got to laugh, on line lessons are definitely preferable to no lessons.

Op schools round here that went on line actually got ahead of the curriculum!

Op I'm afraid you will have to plug the gap yourself.

Can you afford tutors?

One a week? Can you buy books, research and ask maybe on the main boards here what support you can provide?

Ask other parents if they can pool for a tutor via zoom?

What happened in March, or even September, isn't what should/will happen now. The rules didn't change until early the end of October.

It should be better than March. That was an emergency and this shouldn't be such a surprise

Don't forget:
Lockdown 1 = curriculum suspended, no obligation for any remote learning, schools told not to teach children of key workers in schools to prevent learning gap with those at home (ie we were to provide care to enable their parents to work). There was no indication of how long it would go on for (we were told repeatedly "just for two more weeks" ie not worth investing in improving it) Some schools broke ranks, and over time the provision improved. Please do not blame schools for provision, or lack of, in Lockdown 1.
Legislation introduced obliging schools to have remote learning up and running early in the autumn term (NB not online learning). This was linked earlier and must have sequences of lessons, plus feedback. Judge schools on this if you wish; Ofsted has been doing random supervision visits to check on this, and other issues. This is being 'supported' by the DfE - we were promised three laptops for our vulnerable children, later downgraded to one for the entire school. We have had no extra funding for any aspect of COVID at our school, despite providing hard packs of materials weekly throughout Lockdown 1. Don't forget, we can only apply for extra cleaning money once we have had a positive case in school, rather than for prevention.

@Tyranttoddler 'It should be better than March. That was an emergency and this shouldn't be such a surprise'.
As far as I know, no decisions have been made, other than the 'exam years plus primary will be back in the first week, the rest of secondary on the 11th' (to summarise it), which was made on the Thursday before schools broke up.
Schools could be planning for events that won't happen.

All schools were required to have a Remote Learning policy in place by October half term - this policy will state what remote learning for that school would/will look like (eg how many hours/subjects a day, whether live/online lessons etc, what do do if you have no access to printer etc)
All schools will be different, depending on the pupils, staff, needs, preferences, demographic, and the head ultimately approves what each school does.
But they are meant to have it all set out now, and you should be able to request it (or it might be on the school website- we have it on ours)

This is the case for my year 11 son and it's worked alright. We just have work set on SMH and can email teachers when we need to for help.
My other two are at a different secondary school ( year 9 & 7) and they do have online lessons.
What matters most is the feedback from teachers. That's most important to the success of your child.